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Fall 2024 Course

Mergers and Acquisitions Workshop: Boardroom Strategies and Deal Tactics

Prerequisite: Corporations or permission to waive the requisite.

Exam Type: One-Day Take-Home

Successful M&A lawyers (and bankers) provide leadership and judgment in the boardroom and tactical execution at the negotiating table. Taught by two Mergers & Acquisitions partners at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, this workshop is intended to give students exposure to both the macro strategic issues faced by directors in M&A situations (buy-side and sell-side; hostile, friendly and crisis) as well as the tactical issues involved in negotiating acquisition agreements and other transaction documents. The workshop is based around case studies of several real transactions or strategic situations, and makes use of real transaction documents.  Students will be expected to make presentations and participate in class discussions, and there will be at least two mock-strategy, drafting and/or negotiating exercises.   

Some sessions may feature guest speakers who have been involved in recent deals.

Cross-Registration: Business school students are very much welcome to cross-register into this course (and have done well in this course in the past), and spaces have been reserved for you. Business School students need not have taken Corporations; students cross-registering from other parts of Harvard should seek permission from Profs. Gordon and Lu.

Note: This course will meet over the first-half of the term through October 21st.

Mark Gordon and Meng Lu encourage students to register for Prof. Subramanian’s Deals course. The classes complement each other substantively and the timing works out in that the workshop takes place in the same time slot as Deals but during the first half of the semester, with no overlap.